An Exciting Day

Sunset behind Notre Dame. Waiting for the inauguration.

I know there in the states it's still mid-day, but it's the end of the day here in Marseille and we have to say, it was an exciting day.

We went to the local grocery to pick up some food for dinner. We also decided that if there was a day to drink Mumm Champagne (our favorite), then today would be the day. Our next stop, was the boulongerie to get some bread. The female owner asked us if we were excited about today, and we said "Yes". She said she had bought a copy of La Provencal newspaper to read about Obama. She seemed excited as well.

After going to the vegetable and fruit stand, we stopped and picked up our own copy of La Provencal to see the news. Two pages were devoted to the inauguration with the title saying "The Immense Hope".

Chris did some work, as did I, waiting for the inauguration to be shown on CNN. We got our bottle of Mumm ready for when they played Hail to the Chief for President Obama.

Being here in France and watching the inauguration was really amazing. The two of us held hands and toasted the newly elected President. How exciting to witness this amazing day in history...our first African American President to take office only one day after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. To watch President Obama take his oath and give his speech on TV really instilled a feeling of hope and happiness.

We were impressed with President Obama's speech and are interested to see what happens in the next four years. Being here in France, we know the hard times many are facing back in the states, and we keep thinking that positive things are to come. We know there is a lot of problems that need to be fixed, and that it is not going to be easy for our new President, but as his slogan says, we have hope!

Toasting the new President of the United States of America.



Oreo slept through most of the event. Being half white and half black himself, he knew that this day would come eventually. :)

Fire at Notre Dame

This morning, while eating breakfast, I looked out the window and noticed black smoke in the air. I asked Chris if the smoke was coming from a chimney, but he couldn't see from where he was seated. So he got up, looked out the kitchen window, and said "It's coming from Notre Dame!" I jumped up and looked out and saw the smoke.

Chris looked online, thinking that sometimes Catholics will do smoke if the Pope has died, but I didn't think that was the case. Sure enough, nothing on the internet told us what was going on.

I grabbed my camera and took a picture so I could zoom in and see where the smoke was coming from. It was coming out of a window near the dome. I asked Chris if we should notify someone about it, but he figured that everyone in the city would see it too and call the fire department.

The smoke stopped before we even finished breakfast.

This afternoon, we looked on the Provencal news website, and found out there had been an electrical fire at Notre Dame. They had to evacuate some people, but no one was hurt, and very little damage was reported.

Tonight, Notre Dame is dark. It's very strange looking out and not seeing the glowing lights.

Blog bug bites Chris

Chris has been bitten by the blog bug. He is working, I promise, but he needs something to do for fun besides game (even if it does involve gaming too).

If you are into computer gaming or cooking, check out his blog at http://eremitegames.blogspot.com

His wonderful chicken cacciatore recipe is on there. :)

Walking in a winter wonderland...in Provence!

I woke up this morning around 9am, and fed Oreo his food and then looked out of the window to see something quite odd. SNOW! It was pure white outside and we couldn't see very far at all. I had to make sure I wasn't dreaming! Chris thought I was joking when I exclaimed "There's snow outside!"


Not just snow, but LOTS OF SNOW covering everything. It was snowing so hard, we couldn't see Notre Dame on the hill, or the mountains out our bathroom window.

According to the news, it started snowing this morning around 6:30am, after people had already started going to work and dropping their kids off at daycare. The news said that the whole area is under snow, and even over in Venice, Italy. All the trains, buses, plains, metro, and taxis are not running. The Mayor here in Marseille had declared that everyone should stay put, to not drive, and that your kids would be fine in daycare until later on.

I sat around all morning asking Chris "Can we go play in the snow now?" I finally got him out of the house and we went for a little walk around the neighborhood after the snow stopped falling around noon.

We were quite surprised to find that everything was open. Since a lot of people had already gotten to work before it snowed too much, they just kept a lot of the groceries and boulongeries open. There were people out and about everywhere. We saw two snowmen on the sidwalks, and a few kids having snow ball fights.

Chris attempted to build a snowman on the sidewalk, and it was so funny watching kids and adults stare at him as they walked by. I guess they had either (1) never seen a grown man make a snowman or (2) never seen a grown man make a snowman the way he was doing it. The snow was so wet, that he just took a small ball and kept rolling back and forth to make it bigger. He only made the bottom ball before deciding it was time to keep walking.


We bought some groceries and baguette, took a few pictures, and we came back home. Chris' shoes are not conducive to walking in snow, but thankfully, I have my Ugg boots so it's no problem for me.


Oreo tried to walk out on the balcony earlier and he got snow on his head. We thought about letting him out on the balcony to play, but figured he better not get use to doing that.

I measured 6" on our balcony, but I bet we got more than that.


The rest of the day we spent inside. We would have loved to walk to the port, but it would have been a long walk, and Chris probably wouldn't have been able to do it easily with his shoes. It's so nice looking out at the snow covered rooftops. Some of the snow has melted now, but it's still white.

It's a good thing that Carolyn and David flew home yesterday and not today. Our friend, Jaclyn, is stuck in Paris tonight because there is no way to get to Marseille until possibly tomorrow afternoon. Luckily, Air France is putting her up in a hotel tonight.

See our pictures here http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=3saykfvv.5dyuafrn&x=0&h=1&y=-f4w0te&localeid=en_US